The invisible hand of peer review
Exploit Interactive, (May 2000)Earlier Shorter version: Harnad, S. (1998) The invisible hand of peer review. Nature online (c. 5 Nov. 1998) http://helix.nature.com/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html Longer version: Harnad, S. (2000) The Invisible Hand of Peer Review, Exploit Interactive, issue 5, April 2000 <http://www.exploit-lib.org/>: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/\char126harnad/nature2.html http://www.princeton.edu/\char126harnad/nature2.html.Abstract
The refereed journal literature needs to be freed from both paper and its costs, but not from peer review, whose "invisible hand" is what maintains its quality. The residual cost of online-only peer review is low enough to be recovered from author-institution-end page charges, covered from institutional subscription savings, thereby vouchsafing a toll-free refereed research literature for everyone, everywhere, forever.
